[macvoiceover] Working with google sheets, progress

From: Ian Edwards <ianedwards42@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Mac Voiceover list Mac Voiceover List <macvoiceover@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2014 23:30:22 -0600
Seems like nobody else is having success with google sheets, so I’ll put out 
the tips and tricks I pounded through over the past couple of days.

Why work with Google sheets at all? It’s where information submitted through 
Google forms ends up, and lots of people use Google forms on their sites. We 
use it for a volunteer application form for our community cafe, and staff 
applications for camp. I was able to create the cafe form with Voiceover, so it 
is possible.

First off, enabling screenreader support. On the Sheets page I was working with 
it said to use a shortcut key to enable screenreader support. Searching on line 
I found 3 different shortcut keys, none of which actually worked. I finally 
opened a document in Google Docs, and there was an actual link to toggle 
screenreader support. It seems to have made a difference, apparently it is a 
back end thing with what the screenreader is actually reading vs. what is 
rendered on the screen. Once you enable it the change works throughout Google 
Drive/Docs/Sheets.

For creating a form, I used my Mac with either Safari or Chrome, seemed about 
the same. I’ll try another now that I figured out how to enable screenreader 
support. Regardless, the key was to figure out all the questions and answer 
formats ahead of time, as editing the form once it was created was a pain. The 
process was pretty straightforward after that, add new items, select the 
question type, enter text in fields etc.

The data from a Google form ends up in a spreadsheet in Sheets. I found that 
the easiest way to work with the data was to export the spreadsheet in either 
CSV or Excel and then open it in Numbers. The menus to do this seem to be a bit 
fragile, if you do something with the cursor they are likely to close 
unexpectedly. I found the Voiceover item chooser was my friend there. It takes 
a little while for the chooser to open because of how many items the page 
generates, my table was 160ish rows and I ended up with something like 1500 
items in the chooser. Fortunately I figured it out with a smaller sheet when I 
only had a few rows to scroll through. Here are the steps I use to export to 
CSV. You’ll notice that sometimes you hit VO space to activate an item, 
sometimes enter. Not sure why, but it seemed to make a difference. 

Open item chooser
Type f for file menu.
Hit VO space twice to activate.
Open item chooser
type ownl, that’s o w n l to find the download as item.
Hit VO space to jump to the item, then hit enter to activate it.
Open item chooser
Type sv to jump to the selection for CSV.
For an Excel export, type xc instead of sv.
VO space to activate the item, then hit enter.
A new tab labelled as untitled should open up and your CSV file should be in 
downloads. You can close that untitled tab right away.
The reason you don’t use the first letter of the item is that there is a 
shortcut key that Voiceover doesn’t like using, and the letter for that is 
seperate from the rest of the word in the item chooser.

There is a smoother way to export if you are using an iPhone, don't know if it 
works on iPad, but I would guess it does. In the Sheets app itself there is an 
option to export to Excel and then email the file to yourself. I also picked up 
a paid app called G Drive Exporter. It was only a couple of bucks and I export 
my cafe volunteer response sheets on a regular basis, so well worth it. G Drive 
Exporter has a nice clean interface. There are two unlabelled tabs at the 
bottom of the page, one is your main files list and the other is where your 
exported files end up, so pretty easy to figure out. I’ll let them know they 
need to label those tabs in a future update.

Manipulating a spreadsheet, like deleting a row or column can be tricky in the 
browser version on Mac. There are seperate tables for the header rows and 
columns. You should be able to use those to select rows to copy or delete or 
whatever, but alas there was a glitch. With sighted assistance I figured out 
that I couldn’t get to the header row cells beyond row 8. Up to row 8 I could 
use the VO shift M context menu quite nicely, but after that nothing would 
activate. No amount of moving cursors, changing tracking, or clicking would 
move to those cells.

To manipulate spreadsheets, I found that the Sheets app itself was the most 
effective. Standard navigation works pretty well, you use a 3 finger swipe up 
to scroll down through the table, and there are pretty easy to access header 
columns androws to work with. To add or delete a row, or column, 1 finger 
double tap a cell in that row to select it, then 1 finger double tap again to 
bring up an edit menu. Under more items there are, well more items that include 
adding and deleting rows and columns.

Ok, that was a much longer ramble than I had planned. It’s probably half way to 
being a guide. Keith, next time I have to procrastinate something I’ll look at 
the format you use and send you something to post to your site.

Peace,

Ian

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[macvoiceover] Working with google sheets, progress

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